When you see a color display on a music-streamer’s remote control, it’s
natural to assume that the manufacturer is going after the vaunted
Sonos Digital Music System. But after thoroughly testing the Squeezebox
Duet—Slim Devices’s first new product since being acquired by
Logitech—we’ve concluded that Sonos has little to worry about.

It turns out that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is good for more than just
playing games and streaming the occasional transcoded video file.
Indeed, the game console can also be a source of movie and TV-episode
downloads using Microsoft’s online store, Xbox 360 Marketplace.

Vudu delivers more HD content than any other service, but achieving that image quality requires you to purchase a $300 box that can’t be truly integrated into the rest of your home network (meaning you can’t stream the content downloaded to it from one room to another). And the company currently has HD licensing deals with only Lionsgate, Paramount, and Universal; the rest of its offerings are limited to standard definition.

HP’s Media Vault is like a clumsy, fat version of HP’s star-quarterbacking, marathon-running, leather-jacket-wearing MediaSmart Home Server. And that’s saying something, considering the MediaSmart EX475 is something of a middling performer. We can’t fault HP for trying to make a cheaper, simpler alternative to the Windows Home Server-based MediaSmart, but we’re certainly ready to take the company to task for releasing a product that doesn’t work as advertised.

We’ve been waiting for media-streaming devices to catch up to 802.11n, and the Linksys DMA2200 does it in style—geek style, that is. The box isn’t particularly attractive, but we dig the dual-band Wi-Fi radio inside that’s capable of operating on either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz frequency bands.

We’re going to get this out of the way up front. If you’re looking for raw speed, the MediaSmart isn’t for you. We’ve tested faster NAS boxes, but we’ve never tested a network storage device that delivers the same level of functionality as this little Windows Home Server-based wonder.

Which consumer product first enabled any PC with an Internet connection to remotely control a set-top box or DVR and stream live or pre-recorded television to it? If you answered “Slingbox,” you’re mistaken. It was actually Sony’s LocationFree TV.

We like Netgear’s EVA8000—a lot. Its industrial design fits in with the rest of our AV gear, its user interface is as elegant and polished as it is easy to use, it supports resolutions up to 1080p with an HDMI port, and that’s just the beginning. But if you buy one, make sure it has the latest firmware update before you do anything else. We couldn’t configure our review unit at all until we updated the software. With that housekeeping accomplished, we were on our way to streaming bliss. Although the EVA8000 has dual antennas, it’s still limited to 802.11g speeds and cannot reliably stream high-definition video content without a wire, but it delivered excellent image and audio quality.

We found some innovative ideas inside the MediaGate MG-350HD, but this streamer’s shortcomings far outweigh its assets. Designing the shell to accommodate an optional 3.5-inch hard drive, for instance, is brilliant; ditto for including logic enabling it to operate as a USB 2.0 host. This means it can not only behave as a NAS box but also copy images off your digital camera without you having to first fire up your PC. But we’re less enthused about having to do a reach-around to access the USB port, and the hard-drive interface is old-school IDE.